#which makes me wonder if they had direct contact as early as s1

[caligarish]

One of the best - and saddest - punchlines in RGU is when Touga tells Miki to claim his precious things before somebody else takes them away, and then Akio proceeds to do exactly that to Touga by grooming Utena. Granted, Utena is a baby lesbian so Touga never really had a chance, but the irony is there.

[ramblingaboutglee]

In Defence of Shelby Corcoran

I was honestly surprised the first time I dipped into fandom and saw just how much dislike seems levelled at Shelby. Like, seriously, looking at her tag is immediately all hate - and sure, there’s stuff you can criticise, but honestly it would be harder to find a Glee character that shouldn’t be in prison if they were real. 

So let’s just get right into it. Who is Shelby? What’s her arc, what her are relationships like, what makes her tick? And why is she one of the most compelling characters on this show to me?

Trigger warning for discussion of a sexual relationship between a teacher and student. Because yeah, we’re going through everything. 

Season One

Before the series, Shelby serves as a surrogate for Hiram and LeRoy Berry, and signs a contract agreeing to no contact with Rachel until Rachel was eighteen. At the time (she was in her early twenties, it seems) she went along with this, but came to regret it. 

(There is some confusion as to specific details, at some points it’s said Shelby gave Rachel up for adoption, but at the same time in season one, these were Rachel’s parents:

So one of them is Jeff Goldblum. Let’s just agree Rachel was conceived in a time paradox and move on).

Shelby, a good singer (I mean, she’s Idina Menzel), ended up coaching Vocal Adrenaline and leading them to multiple national wins. At Sectionals in S1, she saw Rachel perform, which brought her regrets to the front of her mind and she decided she wanted to know her daughter, contract be damned. Rather than directly go after her, and face legal consequences, she asked Jesse to get a feel for if Rachel would want to know her, and to give her a message if so. Jesse does so, and she hears that Rachel is interested in meeting her. 

They were in contact, openly, for a time - Rachel did want to know her mother, and Shelby was glad to be with her, but it soon faltered, and ended with Shelby cutting ties and leaving Lima.

Season One Thoughts

This story is genuinely compelling to me, but part of that might be from how I watched it - I do wonder what it would have been like week by week, and would need to double check to see how well a lot of the themes are conveyed. I think if you view the arc as a simple “Rachel wants to know her mom and Shelby backs out,” I can understand a lot of bitterness towards Shelby.

What the show does though, is deconstruct that. Glee, especially for the first five seasons, is never a straightforward ‘dreams come true’ narrative. There’s always something wrong. You could look at Quinn having a firm idea of what she wants her life to be like, and not actually enjoying any of the reality. You could look at Will’s storybook romance with his high school sweetheart and how that ended. You could look at the whole S1 finale, and how it’s predicated on the New Directions losing. Then there’s the finales for seasons 3 and 5, standing in defiance to the idea that your dreams coming true will be as simple or as easy or as satisfying as you imagine. 

Shelby and Rachel both want something - and what they want is something they can’t get.

Shelby doesn’t want her daughter, she wants the baby she gave up fifteen years ago. Rachel doesn’t want Shelby, she wants to have had the ideal mother in her head. Shelby trying to be that for Rachel would be an act of selfishness. Rachel isn’t the daughter Shelby wanted - you don’t get a redo, she gave Rachel away fifteen years ago and there’s no second shot. Trying to somehow make a fifteen year old fill the same niche as her baby would be abuse. And then for Rachel, she’s always going to be looking for that history, that connection, with Shelby - and Shelby isn’t going to be able to magic up a relationship. The two of them are strangers, more than mother and daughter. 

(I’m jumping ahead, but it’s worth saying that in season 4, Shelby pops by to see Rachel, and Rachel calls her ‘Shelby,’ not ‘mom.’ They aren’t mother and daughter on anything more than a biological level) 

Sometimes toxic relationships aren’t a result of malevolence, but of two people fundamentally needing different things. So Shelby does the mature thing, and puts that distance between them, because if she doesn’t draw that line then Rachel is going to start spiralling. 

(And, of course, then Shelby goes on to adopt Beth so that she can have the experience of raising a baby. It’s not the same, but it is closer). 

Season Two

Shelby doesn’t appear. We can extrapolate a few things though - she raises Beth in New York as a single mother, though sees little showbusiness success. 

Which brings us to season three.

First though, I’m going to ramble a little. This probably deserves its own essay at some point, but season one and season three feel like the same show to me - season two is very distinct. 

Season 1B saw a spike in viewers compared to 1A after a chance for word of mouth to spread, and S2 would have offered the same - people hear about the show when it’s not on, and tune in when it starts up again. This was Glee’s heyday. This is just me speculating, but I do wonder how many people saw S2 as what Glee ought to be, or as the bit that best represented their tastes, when it was very much an aberration in the show’s run. 

Notably, season two is almost completely devoid of the thematic beats that made season one so interesting to me - which season three brings back in a big way, and in a way that is central to Shelby’s arc. Lacking that context, it’s easy to see some already-dubious decisions seeming far worse to people for whom season two was so iconic. 

Season Three

So here we go. Shelby is offered ostensibly a huge amount of money to come back to Lima, and help coach a rival show choir. Having apparently seen little success, as a single mother, she takes the chance. 

Back at McKinley, Shelby coaches the Troubletones, and seems to be a welcoming teacher. Obviously though, the big dynamic is with Quinn and Puck, whose baby she’s raising. She sees herself in Quinn, and wants to give her the experience she once wanted - to have a chance to know her baby. Unambiguously though, early-S3 Quinn is not in a good place; she’s violent, cutting off friendships, self-destructive, and legitimately criminal at points. (I mean for crying out loud, she tries to plant stuff in Shelby’s apartment to get Beth taken away. Quinn is in a bad place). 

Throughout it all, Shelby is remarkably restrained, always trying for sympathy rather than anger. Like, make no mistake, Quinn could so easily be expelled, if not more, for some of the stuff she pulls - and Shelby is quiet, and still leaves Beth on the table. She doesn’t want to trust her baby to someone currently not in the right headspace to look after another person, and is trying to keep boundaries to prevent another Rachel situation, but she wants Quinn to have the chance she didn’t. 

Which, yeah, then we get to Puck. Honestly Puck’s someone else that probably merits an essay, still untangling how I feel there, but as far as this arc goes, Puck ends up attracted to Shelby, and she explicitly turns him down several times. Until a health scare with Beth sees her panic, and she sleeps with him, and while she is undeniably not in her right mind from that situation, it is absolutely something she should not have done. Puck is eighteen, as the show points out, but he is still a student and she is a teacher and there is no mindset where she should accept his advances.

There isn’t explicit resolution here, which is a shame. Quinn almost turns Shelby in, but decides not to - you can have your own opinions on that, where I fall is ‘Quinn doesn’t think Shelby’s ever going to do anything like that again, and wants Beth to have a mother who can look after her.’ Personal morality kinda has to be left at the door to deal with Glee characters, so I just go by whether I can buy the characters acting the way they do.

Shelby leaves town after this. Ostensibly, she is on better terms with Quinn - and Quinn gets good development over the rest of the season, though beyond a shot of a photo in Quinn’s locker (that she must have received from Shelby, indicating communication) I don’t think Beth gets mentioned again. 

Which is where the recap ends. So!

Season Three Thoughts

Yeah, a lot to unpack here. 

One of the things I find interesting about Shelby, is that a lot of the time she ends up in situations in which there really is no good option. In season one, the moment she decided to seek out Rachel, the only two outcomes were short-term heartbreak of Rachel missing her or saying goodbye, or the long-term decline of Shelby consistently failing to be able to be what Rachel wanted and needed her to be. One can condemn Shelby’s decision to violate the contract and seeking to contact Rachel soon after Sectionals, but it is at least a sympathetic mistake. 

And then season three, right from the start we’re on an inevitable pathway to bad. 

Step one, Shelby’s offered a well-paying job in a field she’s good at. She’s a single mom, paying New York rent, jumping at the chance for a payday is understandable, potentially even necessary. Plus it’s a job that means she can spend more time with her daughter. 

Step two, okay, back in Lima, back at McKinley. Does she firmly draw lines and not interact with Rachel, Quinn and Puck, or at least limit such interactions to a professional context? Well, that’s not really feasible, non-interactions are still interactions and it would come off the same as simple rejection. Anything she does here will have an effect. 

And she’s Shelby, her whole arc in season one was processing the fact she misses the daughter she never got to know. Of course she’d want to offer the same chance, when it comes to Quinn - she sees herself in Quinn. 

S3E2, I Am Unicorn: “I know what happened to you. Same thing happened to me, when I gave up Rachel. I went with a Regis Philbin tattoo and the Sinead O’Connor haircut.”

She’s been where Quinn is. She isn’t looking down on Quinn, she’s recognising that Quinn very much is in a self-destructive spiral, just like she used to be, and wants to help her out of it, wants her to have the chance she didn’t, while recognising that Quinn is a danger to herself and to Beth at the current time. The notable thing to spot over 3A is that Shelby sees right through Quinn in a way few characters do, and is always genuinely trying to help her.

Which takes us to step three: what should she do about Quinn and Puck? She tries to set boundaries, and they get ignored. She wants to do it more slowly, to avoid what happened with Rachel, and Puck shows up uninvited, and Quinn keeps pushing - Shelby is bad at saying no, and clearly concedes more than she’s willing to or ought to. Equally, she doesn’t want to immediately ask a couple of teenagers with their own issues to babysit. 

Could Shelby handle it better? Probably, but there isn’t really any good way to act in this situation, and certainly no good way for someone with Shelby’s history to act. 

S3E6, Mash-Off: “It’s not about whose body she came out of. [Motherhood is] about accepting the fact that you don’t matter anymore. That your feelings, your life, and your body, they all come second to making sure that the child is happy and safe.”

Which, for the record, is where Quinn was in season one, just as Shelby herself was learning that lesson. It’s not about genes, it’s about care, and putting someone above your own wants. Shelby wanted a relationship with Rachel - and recognised that what she wanted wasn’t a healthy thing for Rachel. Quinn wants Beth - but more to mark it off as a milestone, an achievement. Quinn isn’t remotely ready to be a mother, not in season one, and certainly not in season three. It’s the same as the prom queen episode later in the season. She has an idea of what she wants her life to be, but none of it is actually her, just her idea of what she ought to do, and Shelby recognises that. (Quinn explicitly suggests that she could go back to being ‘Little Miss Blonde Perfect’ in S3E2, and Shelby replies with “Were you ever really that?” which, again, something Quinn herself takes the better part of the season to learn. The blonde is as much dye as the pink).

Shelby wanted Quinn to be in Beth’s life, but Quinn wasn’t ready. She just wasn’t. Quinn was having a crisis long before Shelby came back, Shelby just acknowledges it and tries to help her through before she’s a danger to herself or to Beth. Letting Quinn interact with Beth would be irresponsible, cutting Quinn off isn’t something Shelby would be able to do, so we’re left with that awkward middle-ground of Shelby wanting Quinn to clean up her act and Quinn taking it as an acting challenge, not acknowledging that she’s not fooling anyone.

Which brings us to Puck. 

I will not defend Shelby’s actions - they don’t ruin her for me, though I can understand why it would be a step too far for a lot of people. 

But let’s talk why this happened. 

Tonight, We Are Young

S3E8: Hold Onto Sixteen: “It goes away, you know... the young. It happens really slow, and you don’t even notice it, and then one day everything just feels different. 

Don’t wish away your life. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. I think I thought being with an eighteen year old would make me feel eighteen again, but mostly it made me feel even older. 

Alright. I’m going to enjoy my last few hours of being a teacher. I recommend that you enjoy being up on that stage.” 

This is where that whole ramble about season two comes in. This is what Glee is about. Season one regularly paralleled the lives of the teachers with the drama of the students, both with Quinn and Shelby even back then, and of course Will’s whole story is about recapturing elements of his youth. Later seasons show the same characters navigating adult life, how their usual shenanigans aren’t so effective in the real world, and it parallels relationship drama in New York with the students still at McKinley... 

Glee is about growing up, the good and the bad. I think, if you watch this show as a teenager, you won’t quite get that. I don’t think there’s any way you can. Glee definitely suffers from being unsure of its target audience at points, I feel. 

But let’s talk about Shelby Corcoran. She was pregnant in her twenties and wanted to be a mother, and it’s fifteen years later and she only just got a baby. That’s a third of her life gone. She’s single, with a string of short-term flings mentioned but no indication of any long-term relationships nor any expectation of one. And she wants to be young again. 

Haven’t we all felt like that? Especially after recent years, to be honest. What if we could go back five years, ten years, and do something differently? Grab an opportunity we weren’t able to grab? Everyone’s given these arbitrary milestones to meet - get married, have kids - and there’s always that vague pressure if you feel you’re not moving ‘fast enough.’

We could talk about Shelby. We could talk about Quinn trying to hit certain milestones over her high school life and failing pretty much all of them, we could talk Will not knowing how to date as an adult after staying with one person since high school, we could talk about Beiste and Emma who are full-grown adults that didn’t hit romantic of sexual milestones that most people would expect, we could talk every queer kid who takes a few more years to come to terms with what they want and inevitably lag a little behind. We could talk about the fact all these milestones are bullshit as is, but that feeling of pressure never goes away. 

Shelby hit a milestone she planned to hit fifteen years ago. She feels the inexorable pressure of time, and tries to recapture her youth. And yes, does something wrong, something that ought to see her fired - though the fact the Troubletones are shut down in the aftermath and she leaves for New York indicates she did remove herself from the situation. Still, for me, what matters is not what the writers had her do, it’s why she did it. As gross as the plot point itself is, the purpose behind it lends sufficient weight for me to be more than just uncomfortable. 

In Conclusion

I think there are some details here that are open to interpretation. I’ve seen Shelby called manipulative - I’d disagree with that characterisation, but no doubt you could find angles to take to lead you to it. One could debate how much of season three is her trying to use her experiences to help Quinn, how much is her projecting upon Quinn in a situation that doesn’t always fit, and how much is trying to live vicariously through Quinn. While I take a more sympathetic view, I could see the argument for some of these others. 

You’re not going to find me claiming that Shelby’s perfect. I don’t think she is, nor would I want her to be. I think her flaws are compelling, and her motives make her an interesting character to dig into - and, yes, I find her relatable and sympathetic at many points through her appearances. 

(Also, yes, I cried at I Dreamed A Dream)

And while there are definitely things I think you could argue make her unforgivable or unlikable - things basically every character on Glee has - there’s also enough there to engage with if you want to. 

So, yes, I like Shelby Corcoran. I find her arcs compelling, her relationships in general interesting, her character marvellously complex, and the parallels she has with the rest of the cast add a lot to the themes of the show. 

Thank you for reading this far about a character no one else seems to care about. If you did. 

Now go listen to Somewhere. 

[lovecolibri]

I was hoping Michael's recent growth would improve the next Malex interaction but we got two so far and both of them had him initially look all hopeful only to almost immediately try to bait Alex with some stupid line like 'I just want you to be a guy who gives damn' to push him to open up which of course won't work but will make Alex snap back at him defensively and this dynamic might as well have been copy-pasted from their very first scenes from the pilot. No wonder so many of us are frustrated. Kudos to Vlamis and his puppy dog heart eyes but I really need the show to let Michael use his words that he can apparently do now with everyone else except Alex. 'What are we doing, Alex?' is something that would have made sense for him to say in S1 but after 57 rejections in S2 it's honestly just weird. Alex telling him he would care a lot if Michael got hurt doesn't mean he's looking for something from him or doing the push/pull thing again. Malex has long been on Michael's terms now so suddenly reverting back to early S1 is confusing to me. I really thought the beginning of S3 would have Michael be able to talk about wanting Alex in his life even if he's with Forrest and the friendship/awkward tension of being possibly something more after Forrest's gone would follow but it's 3x07 now and there's no sign of that anywhere. It's getting to the point where them starting a relationship this season if the pacing remains wouldn't feel satisfying to me. But also I really don't think Vlamburn's excitement (especially from Tyler who's the only one who really understands how important good queer rep is no shade to Vlamis) means we're putting things off until S4. And they can't honestly expect to placate fans through another hiatus.

Yes to all of this! Reverting back to that season 1 dynamic where Michael looks hopeful, Alex says something mean, and Michael looks crushed is absolutely NOT IT after all this time, and especially after what went down in season 2. Malex is never going to feel satisfying if that isn't addressed between them, and trying to make the audience forget about Michael's behavior last year by making Alex be the mean one crushing Michael's hopes this season is a cycle I'm not interested in repeating. Mostly because Alex has every right to not think Michael wants anything more from him! Last season was all on Michael's terms like you said, so only giving us Michael's POV and making it look like Michael is hopeful and just waiting on Alex to make a move and putting it all on Alex to start things is ridiculous. But we also aren't getting Alex's POV, so there's not way to know what he's thinking or wants or where he stands with Michael. Is he still pissed about last season (but only at Michael, never at m*ria because we just can't have that. She's his "dream girl", haven't you heard? It's such a shame he's gay, because if he could, he'd pick her too. 🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮🙄🙄🙄🙄)

Overall the lack of Malex interacting or talking about each other has been MORE than disappointing. Last season was a lot of misery porn for them, but at least they were in the same frame and we were getting to see them having feelings! Michael's may have had to disappear every time he wasn't in the Malex "bubble" because c*rina was The Worst, but still we got something. And I'm a little confused about the direction they are taking in season 3 because one of the big issues mentioned in reviews about season 2 was the absolute waste of that Vlamburn chemistry! Does this show even know how lucky they are?! As far as he has stated publicly, Vlamis is a straight man so they very easily could have ended up with lackluster chemistry or awkward physical contact scenes. But instead we got this absolute magic with Malex and they can't even be bothered to let them be in scenes together? And we've gotten the Vlamis glassy eyes a few times about Alex, but none of Alex's sad face so we are left speculating about what's even going on in Alex's head.

It's just really frustrating after that looooong hiatus during which they had plenty of time to go over the reviews from season 2 and address what didn't work and while they are doing good in some areas, the fact that they decided to put Malex back at the starting line of season 1 so they didn't have to address the m*luca mess is ridiculous. And on that note, this is NOT the m*ria d*luca show. I am SO BEYOND uninterested in seeing her take on Jones. There's zero indication she could handle what Isobel, Max, and Michael couldn't, especially since her mind is supposed to be deteriorating when she uses her "powers". Oh right, I forgot. She's "not like other girls". 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

[brightly-painted-canvas]

Hi! I've noticed you wrote rami and joe being roommates in one italian joe fic and i love the idea!!!! Do you mind sharing maybe more hcs?

Hi! Sorry for being so late >.(since I couldn’t finish today and tomorrow’s entries for the Sledgefu week, I figured I could at least reply to your request that was sitting for some time in my ask box)(it still took some time to write ‘cause I tend to get a lot invested in these things… hope you don’t mind!)

It all starts because Rami has to move to NYC to film Mr Robot and the flat he had decided to rent for the first months in the city is suddenly no more available (for an unlucky coincidence of bad maintenance from the previous owners, delay on reparation works from the current owner and Rami’s lack of time to get directly involved in these matters) and he has to ask to his New Yorker friends for a place to crash, promising it would be only for the time it takes for his flat to get fixed

of course Joe is the first friend to reply and the most enthusiastic one because he’s like that and he’s always there to lend a hand

of course (2) Rami’s own flat’s works get delayed over and over again and at the end he’s finishing shooting S1 of Mr Robot and he’s still living with Joe (and loving the shit out of their shared routine)

since the first week of their cohabitation, Joe has Rami saved under ‘Roomie Malek’ on his phone (and finds it hilarious, thank you very much)

he steals Rami’s phone at some point and saves himself as ‘Joe Roommazello’ (also hilarious, he’s born to make great puns)

Rami never changes that for some reason (reasons different than his inability with technology I know how to make my phone work Joe fuck right off)

problems with Rami’s real inability with technology start manifesting when Joe, who at that moment is a 30 years old single and ready to mingle boi, realises it’s impossible to successfully end a date with Rami as a roommate, since he doesn’t check his phone EVER and he always misses Joe’s texts about needing the house for himself until at least 11 pm

the times Rami walks in to Joe and a gal/bloke making out on the couch reaches uncountable amounts very fast

Joe is very uncomfortable and Rami is always apologetic but he simply seems unable to solve these recurrent awkward situations by checking and maybe replying to Joe’s desperate texts and phone calls

Joe tries to find a remedy by buying a large whiteboard he hangs on the kitchen’s wall. He divides it in seven sections for the seven days of the week and then instruct Rami to use a red marker while he uses a blue one

the whiteboard is to keep tracks of their schedules so that everyday they know what they have to do and at what hour they should be expected home without having to call the other’s manager

it starts off pretty well but then it becomes so convenient that they begin to leave messages on each other’s daily space, written in their marker colour but in opposite handwritings (‘remember to buy milk’ ‘I’m lactose intolerant’ ‘from Rami to Rami: remember to buy milk’ - underlined - ‘from Joe to Joe: remember to buy regular milk for Rami and soy milk for you’ ‘trip to LA in one week’ ‘I’m gonna miss you’ ‘you’re coming with me’ ‘oh right I forgot’ ‘this is what the board’s for’, etc.)

(a third marker is added to the board. It’s green and it means things they do together)

(it’s still impossible to prevent Rami to catch Joe in compromising positions with his dates because even writing ‘DATE NIGHT’ - underlined - on the board doesn’t mean Rami’s sleepy and tired mind after a full day on set is going to remember that he needs to give Joe his private time at home before he can have dinner, take a shower and fall into bed)

(trying to have sex while Rami’s eating cereal in the kitchen is an absolutely miserable experience, Joe finds out)

Joe stops dating altogether at some points. It saves him the stress to try and find a date and getting ready and spending lots of money for nothing. Moreover, his evenings are already plenty of fun with his and Rami’s late dinners and movie nights and script readings and scene rehearsing and lazy cuddles on the couch

cuddles are a must in their house, by the way. It’s written in their Roommates Contract which they never actually redacted but they quote from all the time since they rewatched S1 of TBBT together (‘before the show turned to shit’ ‘please don’t say that in public’). They’re both very tactile, affectionate men and they really really don’t care about any toxic masculinity crap, especially in the privacy of their own home

they mostly cuddle in the evening on the couch under a blanket (watching old movies they both love like ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ which is Joe’s favourite and always makes him cry a bit at the end) or on Joe’s bed when Rami comes home very late from set and really needs a hug before going to bed. Joe is always willing to hug someone in distress, even if that requires being woken up at 2 am with a armful of yawning Rami Malek complaining about skipping dinner and feeling NY’s freezing winter weather into his very bones

(Joe hugs him closes and then gets up to make him a ham sandwich while Rami takes a boiling hot shower)

Rami doesn’t date. There are multiple reasons why, but mostly it’s because he’s too busy with filming his first leading role in a tv show and because he’s not one for one night stands so he prefers skipping the dating process altogether while he’s too into his job to really make an effort

plus, Joe’s enough of a reassuring, calming presence in his life at the moment. He’s someone Rami can trust wholeheartedly, from that time he calls him from set panicking about forgetting to turn off the stove that morning (to which Joe has to run home and check if that is true and their apartment is on fire - it isn’t -) to that other time he fell sick with the flu and Joe cancelled his plans to take care of him and make sure he didn’t die of dehydration and lack of medications

Joe is also someone who makes Rami laugh and smile and be happy and he does so all the time, effortlessly. It is probably the characteristic that Rami loves the most about Joe, together with his intelligence and his good manners and his profound respect of others

(basically, everything about Joe is nice in Rami’s eyes)

(and it seems everything about Rami is nice in Joe’s eyes too)

because Rami is also enough for Joe. He’s there for the whole writing process of Joe’s directing debut ‘Undrafted’ and when Joe needs help rehearsing or proof reading a scene, he’s willing to sacrifice all his free time to lend a hand. Rami’s presence in Joe’s home is comforting to the point he find it difficult to fall asleep or remembering things like doing the laundry or going grocery shopping when Rami’s back in LA or somewhere promoting Mr Robot because what’s the point?

(Joe doesn’t like to do things alone anymore)

Rami makes Joe feel safe and grounded. Joe has always been a bit of an anxiety-prone person, always fretting about this or that but at the same time incredibly inclined to fall into profound boredom during lulls in activity between jobs. Rami’s presence somehow prevents him to get too caught up in his own mind during busy times and too lazy to function as a regular human being when he’s got nothing to do

it somehow reminds him of when they first met, on the set of The Pacific: Rami had been an anchor for him at that time too, the ‘one who makes it great’ with his hard work and grace under pressure and willingness to always strive for more, better, best. Their great connection and synergy had started back then and never left. This knowledge makes Joe sad sometimes, thinking about all those years in between when they hadn’t been as close, hadn’t kept in touch enough

sometimes they call Martin just to bother him at odd hours (mostly when it’s already late at night in Ireland) and they always invite him to the US to spend some time together, even if they’re all very busy with their works. Some other time they arrange nights out with Noel and Brendan and all those other The Pacific kids they’re still in contact with because they still get along like brothers and New York is the place where all their roads cross at some point or another

members of their families come to visit and arranging sleeping accommodations when the Maleks are over is the most complicated task: they have two bedrooms with queen size beds and a couch that can accomodate one more person, but they always refuse to let Nelly sleep on it and both offer their own bed to Rami’s mom

after hours of offerings and complaints (Italian hospitality having a fitful match with Egyptian proper manners… the Mediterraneans are all stubborn and prideful in their own ways of being good people), she accepts to sleep in Rami’s bed while the twins take Joe’s bed and Joe creates a nest for himself on the couch

(Nelly wakes up early one morning during their stay to find the couch empty and her three boys all asleep on Joe’s bed with Joe’s laptop still open showing its screensaver and Sami curled up against Rami’s back as Rami’s head is on Joe’s shoulder and Joe’s right arm is under Rami’s waist)

(she closes the door quietly and prepare breakfast for the four of them and doesn’t say a thing when they all emerge sleepy and messy from Joe’s bedroom, but she smiles knowingly at Sami when he catches her eyes as they witness Joe and Rami’s perfect coordination in serving each other toasts and coffee with the right amount of milk and sugar without having to say one single word)

when Yasmine comes to visit, she usually stays in a hotel with her fiancée/husband so they only have to worry about dinner and entertainment

when Joe’s sister comes to visit with her family, Rami gets so excited to see Joe’s nephews that he can’t fall asleep the night prior. He loves chatting with Mary and her husband but the kids are an absolute joy to have around: they play board games and watch movies and one time they all go ice skating together and Rami almost tears up when the youngest calls him (albeit accidentally) ‘uncle’ for the first time

soon (too soon) Mr Robot S1 is over and Undrafted is ready to go into production and while they’re very excited for their new projects, they feel like they’re slowly drifting apart and they don’t like it one bit

Rami is conflicted about moving back to LA for the months he has before S2 starts filming and taking his stuff with him to finally free Joe of his presence. He’s got enough time to look for a new place to stay on his own while he’s back living with Sami, but somehow he doesn’t want to proceed with this plan

Joe’s rarely at home enough to sit down and have a serious conversation about it, but at the same time Rami doesn’t think this is a topic they can discuss over the phone so he delays his flight and he delays having to think about it until

one evening Joe comes home tired and stressed out and crushed by the amount of pressure he’s under to make this movie (HIS movie) work

Rami is there to comfort him and force him to eat dinner and have a shower and going to bed and when Joe breaks down crying in his arms sobbing about not being good enough it takes Rami 0.01 seconds to decide to cancel his flight and stop worrying about what’s right and what’s proper because he’s needed HERE RIGHT NOW and he has to stay but most of all he WANTS to stay

he’s never gonna be perfectly sure he’s the right person to do this for Joe, if Joe needs him because he is conveniently already there in his life or if he’s there because he has been good all along (chosen maybe), because they made it work and it’s working perfectly, because somehow they’ve become exactly what the other needs for it to be right

he’s never gonna be sure but they don’t really have to talk about it either because they both wants this and they’re ready to make an effort to make it right and keep it being right

(Rami thinks Joe makes him a better person because he is inherently a good person. Joe thinks Rami makes him a better person because he is inherently a good person)

soon (2) it’s time for Mr Robot S2 and Rami never really went away in the meanwhile, but that’s okay. Joe is editing Undrafted and it’s maybe not going to be the best film ever made but it’s good and Joe likes it (and Rami likes it a lot) and that’s okay. They’re still living together and their families still love coming to visit them and their whiteboard is still full of things to do written in green and that’s okay. Rami stops looking for flats to rent or buy in NYC and that’s absolutely okay

they celebrate one year of being roommates with dinner in a fancy restaurant downtown (Rami’s choice) and a walk in the park and when they get home they watch Netflix on Joe’s bed and Joe says ‘if I’d known the only way for you not to ruin a date night was having a date night with you, I’d asked you out sooner’ and Rami laughs until there are tears in the corner of his eyes

they are (more than) okay.

[mittensmorgul]

Hi again, I’m the anon who wrote about how Missouri’s death felt cliched to me in terms of SPN killing off characters unnecessarily. That’s interesting how you described her sacrifice to motivate Dean. I’m wondering if she could have used her premonition to lure the MotW as a trap. Why was she alone and why say to your killer I know you are here to kill me so I’m going to just stand here and let you do it? Do you think she could have reconnected with Patience and James in another way? 1/2

2/2 Of course the Winchesters are our heroes and stars of the show, but they have introduced such a wonderful universe to assist them, I just wonder why they continue to narrow that world. Particularly with losing characters (actors) of representation like Eileen and Missouri, and when the spin off emphasizes strong female characters. Thanks for letting me share my thoughts.2/3 Sorry, I probably should add that I truly love this show and I love meta writers like you that analyze it so well. I’m just confused and dismayed by this pattern of writing. Thank you again!

Hi there... and thank you for being so polite and rational with a question that I know deals with some potentially emotionally inflammatory issues. That said, there’s a few things about Supernatural that I know and expect at this point, and things that I’ve understood will carry over to Wayward. The primary one is that on this show, people die.

Lots of people die.

That doesn’t make it any easier when it’s a PoC character, or a woman, or a character from the distant past making a surprise return. Or, in Missouri’s case, all three. But when it was announced that she was Patience’s grandmother, and Patience was going to be one of the stars of Wayward... I gritted my teeth and expected that Missouri might not make it.

Now there’s two ways to look at this. First, from OUTSIDE the story, where yes, we can be angry that the writers chose to kill her off, because obviously they didn’t absolutely HAVE to. They could’ve written her character in a different way, making different choices, but this story wasn’t about Missouri... it was about PATIENCE, and the fact her father had tried to keep the supernatural and her own powers a secret from her, dismissing her strange experiences as “normal deja vu.” But this IS Patience’s “hunter origin story,” and if Missouri had survived, she would’ve had a built-in family member to go to for her “training.” As horrible as it is, the story needed her to have someone else to call when her powers inevitably become too much for her to deal with on her own. Specifically, Jody Mills.

The drama with Patience and her family is likely to arise in her future dealings with her father, who can no longer deny Patience’s gift and will likely feel torn about her struggle to continue living a normal life now that she understands her powers.

That’s the IN-STORY reason.

(You also mentioned that she could’ve reconnected with James and Patience another way... but she’d already tried that. She’d tried to call him, tried to warn him, and he’d hung up on her. From her phone (Lizbob thought at first it was a continuity error that Missouri and James both said they hadn’t talked to each other in a long while, but she dialed his number from the “recent contacts” list on her phone, so I assume they were trying to say that Missouri had tried to contact James multiple times about this as the danger-level increased, and he either ignored her calls or hung up on her each time. That’s what led her to call Sam for help in the first place. She’d already exhausted her own ability to reconnect with them, had already foreseen her own death regardless of what she did, and so she changed the terms by calling the Winchesters.)

I said that Missouri’s death motivated Dean to hustle down to protect Patience... and yeah it had that effect. But the PRIMARY reason for her death was FOR PATIENCE. NOT FOR DEAN.

In-Story, Missouri said she’d seen every possibility for how her confrontation with the wraith would go, and that in EVERY scenario she’d seen, she died. She knew that no matter what she did, no matter what choices she made, they would always end up there... (heck, the show even has a line for me to quote explaining that one...). So knowing that she only had ONE course of action that-- while it cost her life, it would save her family (by both spurring Dean and Jody on AND convincing James that he couldn’t walk away and keep up his pretense of “normal” and lying to Patience about why they cut ties with her grandmother AND sent the warning/activation psychic vision to Patience so that she’d be prepared to understand and use her powers TO SAVE HERSELF.

Because that fight scene at the end-- both versions-- prove that it wasn’t her father or Jody or Dean who saved Patience, but HER ACCEPTING AND USING HER POWERS.

“Guess I’m psychic.”

And now she won’t ignore her visions. She won’t try to explain them away as deja vu. And considering she has Missouri’s brooch, I think she’s going to be “contacting” Missouri for advice and support. Which I think is kind of awesome, considering that waaaay back in S1, it was originally intended to be Missouri that the boys went back to for help at the end of the season. Loretta Devine wasn’t available, so they had to create another character and give him some early-life backstory for the boys... and that’s how we ended up with Bobby Singer. Who has stuck around despite having been dead for almost as much of the series as he was alive. So in that way, it’s even a wink and a nod from the character created to serve her function in-story.

Her death wasn’t graphic. It wasn’t gory. There wasn’t even any screaming. They didn’t show us a gratuitous shot of her after the fact (just her psychic wake-up call to Patience). For Supernatural, she had a good death. She was self-aware of how problematic it seems on the surface (which I believe Bobo handled really well, because HE knows how problematic it seems on the surface too... it’s clear in every way he wrote this).

Sure, they COULD’VE chosen to write this differently. But I don’t think they “narrowed” that world by this specific choice, since in losing Missouri (a character who was in one episode 13 years ago) the show has GAINED two new PoC (James and Patience) who would’ve been “normal people with normal unremarkable lives” in-story... or, as Missouri said herself, they would’ve been dead if not for Missouri’s sacrifice.

And I’ll say it again-- TO POWERFUL PSYCHICS LIKE MISSOURI AND PATIENCE, DEATH ISN’T REALLY A BARRIER TO AN ONGOING CONVERSATION. Missouri might be technically dead... but Patience is learning to use her powers and has an item with a direct link to Missouri (the brooch). The show has already demonstrated how that works, having Dean lampshade the fact that Missouri’s powers work by touch, then showing us the scene where Missouri gave that brooch to Patience while explaining she’ll always be there for her in that flashback scene where Patience demonstrated how that connection works... I mean, if Missouri isn’t back for the occasional appearance on Wayward, I’ll be shocked.

So all in all, I will save my energy on a show where such a ridiculously high number of people tend to die-- because this is a horror show, and death is inherent in the genre-- and apply it to deaths that were gratuitous and handled poorly. Missouri’s was neither of those things.

(I mean, you also mentioned Eileen, who I think WAS given a horrifying death that served no purpose in-story, was graphically portrayed for the sheer visual impact-- i.e. murder porn-- who was deliberately set up into circumstances that defy logic and then attacked by a creature chosen specifically because it was both graphically violent and impossible for her to elude or fight back against, being commanded by a man wielding a dog whistle, all in the name of making Sam angry-sad. He was already angry-sad, this was gratuitous and pointless, and made the world smaller. It was written for gratuitous shock value. It gave us NOTHING new.)

But an excellent reminder to anyone who sees no difference between these deaths, because death is awful no matter how it’s portrayed: Maybe think about a show outside the horror genre. Because death is intrinsic to the genre, but within the genre, there are good deaths and poorly-handled deaths. And while painful and awful in real-world terms, in-story there really is a difference.